Ava can coach you through a tasting

VinoSeeker has captured tasting notes for as long as we’ve existed — a rating, free-text notes, and (for the studious) a whole accordion of WSET-style fields: appearance, nose intensity and condition, sweetness, acidity, tannin, body, alcohol, flavor intensity, finish, quality, readiness. The structured data is valuable. The accordion was a slog.

Today we’re rolling out Ava as your tasting coach. Tap the new sparkles icon on any sip — either in an active tasting or from your Profile’s Sips tab — and Ava opens in a popover. She walks you through the evaluation step by step, asks one question per turn, and gives you tappable chips for the answers. You don’t need to know what “Medium+” means or which slider corresponds to which sensation. She tells you what to look for, and you tap.

How it works

When the modal opens, you pick a mode: Full Guided Tasting (walk through every aspect) or Help me with a specific aspect (Aroma, Acidity, Tannins, Body, Sweetness, Finish, or Appearance — just one).

Then Ava starts. Each question leads with a sensory instruction: *Take a small sip, hold it for a few seconds, then swallow. Notice the drying or grippy feeling on your gums and inner cheeks. That’s tannin. How strong is it?* Then chips appear — Low, Medium-, Medium, Medium+, High — each with a one-line hint underneath so you can pick the one that matches what you felt.

The moment you tap a chip, the value writes to your sip. No “save it?” step at the end, no losing your progress if you close the modal halfway through. Multi-select questions (aroma chips, fault tags) save on each tap and bundle the chat reply at the end.

If a chip doesn’t fit, type a free-text answer. Ava reads what you wrote and saves it as if you’d answered the question.

Why we built it

The advanced tasting notes panel was the right shape — the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting is what every serious wine program teaches because it works. But the form expected you to already know what “Medium-Plus tannin” felt like, what color “Garnet” looked like in the glass, and what your finish length should be measured against. We were giving experienced tasters a great tool and everyone else a wall of sliders.

A conversation fixes that. Ava can teach as she goes — *swirl, then bring your nose close, mouth slightly open. Do the aromas leap out, or do you have to chase them?* — and the chips give you exact values to write to the column. You learn the framework by using it.

WSET-aligned all the way down

While we were here we cleaned up the structured tasting notes themselves. The schema is now aligned with the WSET Systematic Approach to Tasting end-to-end:

– Appearance — clarity, intensity, color (WSET vocabulary)
– Nose — condition + faults picker, intensity (1–5), development, aroma wheel
– Palate — sweetness (1–7 including Medium-Dry, Medium-Sweet, Luscious), acidity, tannin + character tags, alcohol (1–3), body, flavor intensity, finish, effervescence for sparkling
– Conclusions — WSET quality scale (Faulty → Outstanding), readiness, value

Fields that overlapped or didn’t really map to anything — balance, finish enjoyment, paired-with, decant time, closure type — got cut. Data was migrated where it made sense (the old Corked toggle became Nose Condition = Unclean with the Corked fault tag).

An Enthusiast feature, sharper at Connoisseur

Tasting Coach is gated at Enthusiast. The chip-based conversational format leans on Ava’s understanding of your taste profile, so she can frame expectations — *this is a Riesling, so we should expect bright acidity. How does it land?*

Connoisseur users get the same flow with sharper sensory coaching and the ability to chain in references — *this reminds me of your Andrew Rich session last month, want to compare?* If you’ve been on Enthusiast, the chip-driven tasting works exactly the same; Connoisseur is just a smarter conversation around it.

Open any sip and tap the sparkles to give it a try.